Ray Copeland was born in 1914, in Oklahoma. He was born the second of five children in his family. Copeland’s family was known to move frequently until finally settling down in Ozark Hills, Arkansas. He dropped out of school in grade 4 in order to help his family. Prior to his murder series, Copeland was arrested for forging checks numerous times, was accused of stealing horses and was arrested for stealing cattle.

Copeland’s murder series began in the early 1980’s. All of his victims were male and were drifters. Copeland would make drifters get a post office box and sign up for a bank account. Copeland would then have the drifters purchase cattle with checks that could not be cashed and he would sell the cattle to other buyers. After the drifters did the work for Copeland he would shoot them in the back of the head so that he would not be caught. Copeland would typically bury the remains in a barn, put the remains down a well or would place them under bales of hay.

On August 20, 1989, officers received a phone call from Jack McCormick, who was a former employee of Copeland, who stated that he had found bones on the Copeland farm. Throughout the month of October officers were able to discover the remains of five men, a quilt that Copeland’s wife had made out of the victim’s clothing and a list of 12 names, each of which had been crossed out. Five of those names were the victims that were discovered. On March 7, 1991, Copeland went to trial for five counts of murder in the first degree, was found guilty and sentenced to death. In 1993, before the execution could take place, Copeland died of natural causes, at the age of 78.

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Ray Copeland was found guilty for the murders of five people, but was suspected to have been involved in the murders of twelve people . We currently have information on all of his known victims. Paul Jason Cowart Paul’s remains, age 21, were discovered on October 17, 1989. He had…